


Know These Bones (as being mine)

by AceQueenKing



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Is Haunted By Bad Things They Had To Do For A Good Cause, Complicated Relationships, Force Use, Force Works in Mysterious Ways, Gen, Haunted by Guilt, Haunted by Malovolent Ghost, literal split personality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 04:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16110518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: She would understand her boy, understand how this happened and understand how to fix it, or die trying.





	Know These Bones (as being mine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [outruntheavalanche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/gifts).



In the pyre of a lonely brute dying down to its last embers, Leia Organa (not yet Leia Solo, _never_ Leia Skywalker) made a promise to herself: _I will never be him._

It had been a vow she clung to; a sacred tenant to the constitution of Leia Organa. She had worked all her life since based on it, dedicating herself to making the universe a better place. She had never resorted to a military solution until it was the only one left to her. She had worked many late nights on issues of diplomacy and interplanetary unity, but had still gone to great pains to make time for her child. She had done as much as she could to divorce Ben, her beautiful boy, from the long and bloody legacy of his family; had held his eyes closed to the truth of their kin for as long as she could.

But that, like so many other things, had been a mistake.

Ben, from the moment he was cleft from her side, had bundled himself in blood and pain until he was no longer Ben, instead becoming a different and entirely unknown being. He scared her as he grew and his powers grew with him and, along with it, his anger, his sadness. What once was her son taunted her with all she had allegedly denied him, and, still, her heart had loved him.  

But she did not understand.

She reached out to Luke, for if Luke could save a monster as awful as Vader surely he could save a lost young boy. Ben had begged her not to leave him with his uncle, but she had. She had abandoned him to Luke’s teaching when her son’s eyes were already filled with resentment, and Ben had never forgiven her. Leia had missed him with a fervent, starving love, but he, of course, could not know that.

What happened next was a tragedy, but it was not, entirely, his fault. Those who did not know the sins of the past were doomed to repeat them, and Leia had left her son entirely blind. Her son’s metamorphosis was complete, but it was nothing that she had wanted for him. That anyone could want for him. Kylo Ren both was her son and wasn’t. She wasn’t sure which version of that truth she preferred.  
  
Unsatisfied with merely screaming, her son left her and Luke, the second loss fraying the rope in the force that connected them all between them until the fibers twirled apart. Luke left. The cleaving of her son from her side had been gradual, but remorseless. The first few cuts were so silent she never expected the final crash that had come as Kylo Ren plunged the saber into his father’s heart. Han and Luke both had fallen to him, sacrificed in their own ways to Kylo Ren’s gaping wound of a heart, as if in their deaths Kylo Ren could finally find the vindication for all the sins of the past.

And then they had been alone in the universe, her and her changeling child.

She had known, then, how this would end; there was no coming back from that. Kylo Ren was a tyrant who had shown no remorse. He fought and screamed and he was miserable and so was she, but the galaxy was at stake and Leia Organa, who was so tired, could not shy from her duty.

When he had challenged her, she had accepted. And if he showed no mercy on his untrained mother, then neither had she shown any mercy for him. Luke’s saber burned in her fingers; the green blade of her other half so close to being her own that she, too, was its master. Their sabers met in a clashing arch that was a burning symbol of all they had lost. He’d given no quarter, but Leia had learned more than a few tricks fighting against a Sith Lord in her time.

And Kylo Ren was, in the end, still just a boy.

She had clawed her way to victory and had held both of their sabers in her hand. She held them both to his throat and had known in that one moment what had to be done: to take his blood-red saber and stab it through his own small heart, even if every fiber of her being screamed against it.    
  
But Leia could not do it.

She should have; it would have been a kindness to them both, but she could not, would not lose her son. Love was, in so many ways, a blessing as much as it was a curse. She still loved him, with all the hunger that she had always held for him. Leia Organa did not kill Kylo Ren. Leia had, instead, reached out to the force. And the force had answered her. She’d never been trained, but blood was blood and her family’s blood was more a part of the force than any other living creature in the galaxy. She had simply asked the will of the force to heed her call and it had. _Give me my Ben back_ – she had asked of it. And it had found a way.

Ben fell, as if into a deep sleep and she saw the ghost of the smile on his mouth as he fell back. For a moment he was just a sleeping, harmless boy;  the ghost of the child she had lost so long ago. His face was….peaceful. His mind, for the first time in a long time, was silent. For a moment, she thought he was dead, but then his lips had opened, and she realized he was only sleeping. She clutched his hand and wondered if this might bring him peace.

At the time, of course, she had not known what _this_ was. She had only, naively, hoped Ben was not miserable. His existence had been unhappy, her blood beating violence through his heart and little else. She knew this, for she knew his heart was her own: both chosen and broken by the fates. And she knew, from this point on, that she would refuse to be parted from him again. She would understand her boy, understand how this happened and understand how to fix it, or die trying.

She motioned for a stretcher to carry him. She would take him home.

She should have been happy. She wasn’t. She was only aware of how badly her son’s connection to her had been broken, wondered if he would even welcome the idea of repairing it. How could he be happy? She had taken his greatest gift and used it again him. She’d killed Kylo Ren, perhaps, but at what cost to Ben?

She felt, keenly, her own damnation, even as the Resistance celebrated around her, a triumphant rebel scream as they retook what had been stolen from them. Not all were happy, but enough knew that they had won the day. She thought she could feel the presence of Luke on her shoulder for one heartbeat of one moment but then he was gone, never to return to her again.

Leia paid attention to the celebration from the medbay where she watched her sleeping boy, but only distantly. All she was focused on was the foul taste in her mouth, bitter and cruel.

All she tasted was blood.

She’d rinsed her face when she’d gotten back to her resistance, her quarters, her fresher, _her space_ — only to jump as she saw him staring back at her. The wraith in the mirror was unmistakably her Ben, but different - the eyes wide and pitiless as coals, the face contorted in rage — and sadness too. It was what remained of Kylo Ren.

He howled and screamed, knocking his hand against the glass; she’d paled before it, though of course, her reflection was no longer visible. _What have you done?!?!_  The creature bellowed through the force. _What have you done to me?!!_

She did not answer. She’d pressed her back up against the comforting, cold weight of the durablast door, and she’d sobbed. She had been afraid then, had known that she’d always have two sons; the one here, and the one there. She hadn’t known yet, what exactly the divide between them would be. She had simply stood there and sobbed, as Kylo Ren hit his fists against the glass for hours. He’d given up eventually, once his fists looked raw, and stared at her, an oh-so-familiar hurt sketched across his eyes.

She’d eventually left; felt his eyes following her the whole time. She’d gone to Ben, of course, had held his hand and had, for a moment, thought the spell was broken she he had opened his eyes and smiled at her. She’d soothed his brow, felt dragged underneath a dangerous undercurrent of hope by all his doctors, who had assured her his inability to speak was due to shock, and little else.

Ben simply needed rest, relaxation; an absence of prying eyes and accusatory glances. Thanks to Luke, Leia already knew where they would go: there were planets plenty capable of hiding force sensitives, but none more so than Dagobah.

When she started to pack up the next day, she’d removed the mirror from the bathroom, tucking it under some fabric from one of her dresses as she walked to the Falcon. In her naivete, she hadn’t realized that he could talk to her from any mirror, not just the one.

Ben was waiting for her when she got there, looking vaguely uncomfortable but not at all as deeply unhappy as he had so often. He helped her pack their bags, sliding each into the Falcon's cargo hold with a well-practiced hand. They had worked in concert, but she had seen the way that his eyes moved from the bag to the mirror several times; his hands almost reaching out for it.

She put the mirror in the hold. She was afraid of what might happen; afraid Ben’s eyes might not be able to take the sight of the mirror holding his darkness. Instead, she slammed the door of the cargo hold a bit too loudly, and led her son to the co-pilots seat.

But even though several doorways, she felt Kylo Ren’s mirror-black eyes following her, as if it could sense the guilt that ran through her blood.

***

_Two months later…_

***

Neither of them, really, could pretend to be happy in their new home. Leia Organa never thought her retirement would be like this. Ben well… She still learning about this new Ben, strangely familiar yet alien. She was still falling into patterns. She was still telling herself that this could, perhaps, take some time.

She was not sure she believed herself yet. Oh, her habits had changed alright; There were no more early morning calls, no more meetings. Their home now was in the outer rim on a planet far from the hustle and bustle of Ben’s childhood home, or hers, or even Luke’s remote homeworld. It was ...quiet. Not quite safe, for no place with both of them in it could truly be safe, but also not quite as dangerous as they had been when they were surrounded with so many other people.

Dagobah was was so remote that she had never seen another soul there.

Beyond, of course, the one she kept. Was it Ben’s prison or his home? Even now, Leia was not quite sure. She tried not to dwell on it, but she could not stop herself from wondering.

Every morning, she woke up, tried to ignore the taste of blood still in her mouth. It had never really gone away, since, well - _since._

She tried to focus on the moment, on being in the moment. She had never been good at it, but she tried, oh how she tried.

She dressed every day, studiously avoiding all the mirrors as she pulled her clothing over her old and wrinkled body. She wondered if anyone would even recognize her in the plain clothes she and Ben wore now — crisp, clean, utilitarian. The not-quite-Jedi robes were easy to put on and take off; she didn’t bother with any cosmetics, not anymore. Those would have required the mirror, and those — Leia had never quite been able to let herself look into a mirror. It felt wrong, to do so simply for her own vanity when Kylo Ren was always on the inside, beating his fists against the mirror’s edge.

Each morning, her eyes went to the mirror. She had smashed all but one in the Falcon, hoping to further contain Kylo Ren. She still wasn’t sure what might happen had Ben put his hand upon the veil; she had lost him twice, and to lose him three times — unbearable. Still, every morning, she would brush against the veil of the mirror, and she would, for a heartbeat, be tempted to draw it back.

But she never did.

She also ignored the temptation to pad into Ben’s room and check on him. She didn’t know why she avoided it; it wasn’t as if her Ben was so furious a man. He would generally be in his bed sleeping, or sitting watching the rain beat down on the edges of the Falcon's viewport. Once in a great while, he would have his sketchpad out. Each time that happened, it tugged at her heartstrings. Ben had always been a good artist as a child, and she longed so much for him to have some form of communication (he did not talk, perhaps at this point would not talk). The images he drew were strange; crystals, ambiguous lines, circles. Those mornings were the worst, for she could not shake the feeling that she should understand.

But she didn’t.

Instead, each morning, she focused on what she could do. She made food for them both, using what she could grow (surprisingly, for all the verdant life, not much — but then she had never been a good gardener) and the supplies that she had arranged to be dropped off each month in a shipment that would continue for as long as she can afford to pay for it (it should be enough to keep Ben fed for long after she died). It wasn’t as if she needed to create food for him — when she had fallen ill a week after they had first arrived, Ben had cared for her, silent and sweet as he dotted the sweet from her brow and fed her bowls of tasteless but nutrient-rich gruel.

But still, it felt good to be able to do something for him. Even if it was as simple as adding blue milk to a bowl of grains, and mixing them.

After finishing her own gruel in the morning, she dropped off his. Their living quarters were small but she had still given him his own space in what had once been the med bay, and she tried to tell herself it was out of a sense of privacy, rather than her own desire to have a place for herself as well.

She had thought, in the beginning, that it would get easier. It didn’t.

He stared at her blankly, as he always did. Kylo Ren had taken more of his personality than just the darkness and buried it into the mirror world, and nowhere was she reminded of this more than in the cold, misty mornings on Dagobah that made her joints creak. He took the bowl without complaint and smiled in a way that made her feel empty. She held his hand for just a moment too long, and his mouth opened; always, every day. His lips opened and she listened but the force, in the end, was cruel: he never said anything.

They passed days like that, the quiet suffocating silence between them. That in itself was nothing new, but never had she felt such isolation. In a world teeming with life, Leia Organa had never had less to talk about.

Still, she tried to show that she cared. “Do you need anything, Ben?” she would say, and she would wait in the long silences for Ben to give her any sign of coming back to himself: a movement of a hand, a flick of a finger. But always, he would either stare or go back to drawing indescribable things or, on the worst of days, simply shake his head.

And sooner or later, each day he would stare off toward her quarters, and sooner or later, she’d realize what he was seeking. Sooner or later, she’d bid him goodnight, and walk into her room, lock the door, throw open the fabric folds that hid Kylo Ren from view.

It was the only way to see Ben, truly. What was left of the _real_ Ben. The one the force sealed for her. She would inevitably catch the shadow out of the corner of her eye, his gaze in the mirror hardening as he fumed at her.  In the temple of his mind, that sacred dusty cathedral, he paced like a wild animal. He turned those beloved eyes and they burned like hot stars into her and every time her mouth froze, the only words she could form were _I’m sorry_ over and over again.

But Leia, having heard those words from greater monster’s ghosts, knew how little they soothed.  She felt his irritation at this fact, that she did understand, more than he ever thought she could. She stared at the mirror and the abyss stared back, head tilted as if trying to comprehend her cruelty.  

And then the moment would be gone; the ghost would retreat, and Leia would cover the mirror once more. Every night.

And then, always, she would feel remorse, would worry that somehow Kylo Ren would become part of Ben again; she would be unable to stop herself from fleeing back to her room, only to see her Ben getting into bed, staring at her with a slightly confused frown. And every night, feeling like a fool, she would retreat, go to sleep herself.

And then she would sleep herself, and then Kylo Ren would come to her again.

 _Murderer_ , he whispered; in her dreams, he leaned over her, that dark black hair mixing with her own, his voice tender as he placed a ghostly hand on her shoulder. Did he mean to shake her or embrace her? She was unsure, and, in the end, it did not matter. The hand passed through her like so much ether. Even in dreams, she was denied, and so was he.

“I’m sorry,” she would say to the cold, unblinking dark when she woke. Every night, her eyes returned to the mirror, her only portal to his soul. Kylo Ren waited for her, arms folded, eyes still embers of hatred and distrust.

In the mirror, Kylo Ren could talk, but it was not his true voice, nor the modulated one he’d had from the mask. It was a mental scream, raw and anguished, and it tore at her every time she heard it and yet — night after night, Leia could not resist. Leia sat in front of him in her dreams, and Leia waited, praying for guidance. The force had come through for her once, but she could not feel its guidance now. There was only Kylo Ren in the mirror-world, the changeling she had left behind.

 _Kin-slayer_ , the wraith accused; _You didn’t have to do this!_  

Sometimes she closed her eyes and cried then, long deep sobs that wracked her body and soul. Sometimes, she said nothing, consumed only with an overwhelming desire to protest that his body wasn’t dead — though for all she knew, it may well feel like it was to him. The mind was there, the spirit somewhere else; she did not know what was like, on his side of the glass. Sometimes, she longed to cross it, that final barrier between them.

“I’m sorry,” she said, every night, and her voice trembled. It did nothing to assuage his anger, the anger she spent a lifetime accumulating that somehow had seeped into him. She could only wield a pick and hope to strike deep enough within the ice of her son’s psyche to make him understand, make him whole. “I wish — “ She never allowed herself to complete the thought, but the images still came: Ben, her Ben, the son she wanted him to be: proud, strong, _happy_.

 _You prefer_ **_him_ ** **,** the ghost of Kylo Ren howled every night. _He won’t argue with you, won’t test you, won’t cast a stain upon the oh-so-dear memories of house Organa_ —

Sometimes, she protested. She said _I never wanted you to be a puppet_ and she meant it, and the shadow would fume but his tongue would fall silent and cut her no more. Sometimes, on the worst nights, she would reach out her hand to the mirror, hold one hand over the doors of his cage and long for him to grasp it.

 _I hate you!_ The wraith screamed instead. She was always denied. _Why would I want a parent who never wanted me? Better you should burn._

“You’re right,” she said, night after night, disappointed. And then she would once again withdraw her arm, and once again resume her role as Ben’s caretaker. There was nothing left to this world but the two of them and still, neither of them could find common ground.

One could not redeem that which did not wish to be redeemed.

Once, on the worst day, she woke up to find her Ben looming over her, staring into the veiled mirror with an almost confused expression on his face.  She had put her body over it protectively the second she woke; she did not want to see his face, unable to handle the first expression she had seen him display since coming back to her: _regret._

Regret for what, she did not want to know.

“Ben,” she said, on that night, with a voice both soft and old – she was so old, and so tired now. This Ben was an obedient creature and his head snapped to attention, the regret gone; he sat on her bed, facing her. He said nothing. She grabbed his hand, held it for hours on end. He said nothing still.

She wondered what he thought of; if he, too was thinking of what they were and what they had been and what, perhaps, they one day will be.

“I love you,” she whispered in the dark, night after night. Always the same refrain, though it changed nothing. She meant it, still, to both sides of her son, Ben and Kylo both. “I love you.”

Ben looked at her and stared, unblinking. Once in a very great while she would catch a reflection of Kylo Ren in the mirror, squinting through the fabric she’d hastily pulled around him. Kylo Ren only glowered, but he averted his eyes when she offered her love, and maybe in that, there was hope. Maybe the division between them was conquerable. Maybe if she only stuck at this for another day, she would figure out a way to have her son come back to her whole.

Maybe.

Rain beat on the Falcon’s carapace almost every night on Dagobah, and this was no exception. As dawn slowly came, she and Ben and Kylo watched the sun as it rose through the mire and muck of their swampland home. Leia held her son’s hand, gathered up her strength for the next day to come, and hoped for a better one.

It had always been the problem with their family, she reflected, holding that hand and squeezing it for all it was worth. She couldn’t help but hope that one day Ben would return that squeeze, Kylo Ren would give her some indication of redemption, of desire for redemption, or anything but abandonment and hate.

Skywalkers have never been very good at letting things go, and that is true of all them.

And so it was. The day began again, and she said “we should get up,” and Ben had nodded, and had gone back to his room, to his drawings. She had dressed, and her hand had touched the veil, and she had sucked in a harsh breath but resisted, rising to go to the kitchen to put together breakfast once more.

And life would continue on.  

Every morning she would care for him, every evening he would reject her. She knew, somehow, that this is how it would be. Still, she hoped. Leia Organa was poisoned by hope.

She could only hope it didn’t prove fatal.

For any of them.


End file.
